As the year 2000 approaches, the human race is facing its greatest
	challenge ever: Brain burnout!

Most Americans believe that people use only a fraction of their real
	brain capacity and we have limitless untapped mental resources - but
	nothing could be further from the truth. The human brain is already
	within 20 percent of its capacity for processing information,
	British researchers have found.

"Overtaxed human brains are being forced to take on duties Mother Nature
	never could have foreseen - from operating high-tech computers to
	negotiating an intricate maze of social rules," said an expert
	familiar with the study.

"Our world will only become more complex in the next century - and
	people will increasingly find themselves without the brain power to
	function."

Researchers at BT Laboratories near Ipswich found that the limiting
	factor is the number of blood vessels needed to feed the 100 billion
	neurons involved in brain activity, according to study results
	reported in New Society magazine.

What's more, there's no hope that evolution will step in to rescue us
	from brain burnout - because human evolution stopped at least 50,000
	years ago, according to Richard Cutler of the National Institute on
	Aging.

People with defective eyesight who would have been devoured by
	saber-toothed tigers are now wearing contact lenses and passing
	along poor vision to their offspring. And people whose sheer
	stupidity would have caused them to starve to death or accidentally
	fall off a cliff are surviving long enough to reproduce, thanks to
	mod-ern-day social services and safety rules.

As a result, the old survival-of-the-fittest laws no longer apply when
	it comes to the human brain or body. "Not only are we not
	improving," Cutler says, "we are getting worse!"

														--Weekly World News